My Thanksgiving turkey and me

Yesterday my Thanksgiving was, like many others, extremely limited. It is in style here in Buffalo to defy the rules but everyone in my family was not all on the same page. End result, as we say here in Buffalo, it was just the three of us, Howard and me and Jeoffry.

With not much at stake I felt free to branch out. And one thing I did was try a new way or roasting turkey. Come Thanksgiving, I like to cook out of cookbooks by old dead people. And this recipe was from Bert Greene, this cookbook author who was in my parents' generation and whom I adore.

His cookbooks are just so funny! But that is a topic for another day.

For now, we are talking turkey. Maestro Greene said to put three strips of bacon over it and cut enough cheesecloth to cover the whole thing.

Then you pour a third of a cup of dry white whine and soak the cheesecloth in it and then put the cheesecloth over the turkey. Every half an hour you baste the turkey with this stock you make "meanwhile" from the giblets and such. Do not you love that word, "meanwhile"? It is as if the work gets done by magic.

"The Joy of Cooking," which I consulted first, had something similar. But they wanted you to soak the cheesecloth in oil. That just sounded yuchy to me. Just the idea of this oily cloth -- I said out loud in my kitchen, "I can't do that."

Somehow the Bert Greene, that sounded more like something I could do. And so I did it.

Here is my turkey with the bacon covering it.

That is a pretty big turkey! Back when I got it I did not know if I would be cooking for a crowd or not.

Here is the cheesecloth soaking in the wine. I did not have white wine around so I used dry vermouth.

Next time I will not do it like that. Next time I will just put the cheesecloth over the turkey and pour the wine over that. Because when I fished the cloth out of the vermouth, it was a bear untangling it. It had twisted itself into a thin rope and I almost threw it out. But I did not throw it out, and I untangled it, and it did end up where God intended it to be, over the turkey.

 

The turkey did turn out pretty darned good, I have to say. I stuffed it with Rice Dressing, from "The Joy of Cooking." I did that Rice Dressing a long time ago, and I liked it a lot, but everyone else in my family insists on bread dressing. Which, to be honest, I do not do all that well. They were not here this year and so I went back to the rice dressing.

It was delicious but today being Friday I could not eat it and so I could not refresh my memory. That big turkey in the fridge and I could not touch it. Penance. Penance! I had to quit it, cold turkey!

Tomorrow will be a different story.

I hope tomorrow lives up to the memories!

Thinking Thanksgiving

I have been hosting the family Thanksgiving for a long time. There were only two years in maybe the last 20 that I did not hold it. One was because I was in California with Leonard Pennario and the other was... I do not remember what the situation was but my sister Katie held it instead. I remember there was a reason for that but I do not remember what that reason was.

There was one Thanksgiving before I was married when a storm blew in and I was not sure if anyone would make it. Buffalo has a way with storms.. we tend to get them on holidays, Thanksgiving and, especially, Christmas Eve. This Thanksgiving storm was a bad storm and my sister Katie and her family were coming in from East Aurora. Ah, single life! I remember dressing for dinner, putting on a nice dress, thinking: I might be eating this 24-pound turkey all by my own damn self! And I am OK with that, I thought as I opened a bottle of wine.

However everyone made it! That is Buffalo.

Our Thanksgivings are always chaotic but I look forward to them and I love preparing for them. I love this time of year, the promise of Advent and Christmas, the early darkness.

I love planning the Thanksgiving menu. I like how it is traditional it is, how simple, how cheap. Turkeys are cheap. The supermarkets practically give them away. Pies are cheap, even if you buy a pre-made crust. I personally am making mine with lard. But that is another story for another day.

Potatoes are cheap and so is squash and cranberry sauce and pretty much everything else. It really is, when you get down to it, what might at one time have been considered a simple Sunday dinner.

Over years of subscribing to cooking magazines I have been happy to see that efforts to chip away at the Thanksgiving tradition have failed. Thanksgiving is always under attack. An old Cooking Light suggested beef tenderloin (very expensive by the way) replacing the turkey. Other cooking writers can't wait to tell you they really don't like turkey that much (I love it!) and why don't you roast something else instead?

But the turkey is here to stay. And so is the cranberry sauce. With which, my first Thanksgiving recipe for this year's feast:

Baked Cranberries With Rum!

It is in the oven as we speak.

We are off and running!

The turkey big as Turkey

That Sesame Street scene above, that will be my Thanksgivinv table this year!

Because I went to Tops and bought the biggest turkey.

This turkey is so big that action halted at the checkout. The clerk looked at it and gasped. The clerk's name tag, by the way, read Israel. That must be an adventure to have that name! I wonder if when he goes on break his fellow employees make jokes about ransoming captive Israel.

"Rejoice, rejoice, O Israel!" perhaps they warble.

But back to my turkey.

"I know," I said. "It's big."

The Buffalonian behind me in line also got involved.

"Wow," he said.

I said modestly: "I had to look hard for it."

A 24-pound turkey is not the biggest turkey in the world but it was the biggest to be had at Tops. And I was lucky. Last year they were smaller. It is funny because the food magazines always use a 12-pound turkey as a guide.

Food magazines, that flaw aside, are fun at Thanksgiving. It is no wonder I capitulated on Cooking Light the other day.

You are guaranteed recipes for humble vegetables I love, like cauliflower and squash and Brussels sprouts. Sometimes even cabbage! Sometimes even rutabaga.

Desserts are down-home and use cheap fruits like apples and pears. No macadamia nuts or cocoa nibs.

Old wives' implements that are otherwise rarely mentioned are ushered into the spotlight and discussed. Fat separators. Potato mashers. Food mills.

In the middle of it is the traditional, cheap, all-American turkey.

Bring it on!